Today Syd field is a byword in the screen writing industry. After a career as an actor in the 60's he became a researcher/gopher/sfaff. It is from here that he began to analyze Oscar-winning screenplays which lead to him discovering a formula that no one else had noticed.

In his internationally acclaimed best-selling books Screenplay, The Screenwriter's Workbook, and The Screenwriter's Problem Solver pointed out that on specific pages, almost 85 percent of the screenplays employed 'turning points' or 'plot points'. Subliminally we all recognize this. The vast majority of commercial movies have a regular rhythm and flow. Two star-crossed lovers meet and invariably have a misunderstand and different points of view. Everyone in the theater knows that five minutes before the credits come up, the potential lovers will have a turning point in which they come to understand the other's point of view - and they all live happily ever after.

Prior to Syd Field, no one had officially recognized this inevitability. Syd published his Screenplay in 1979 and immediately became the Bible for aspiring screenplay writers.

His texts on screen writing include Screenplay, The Screenwriter's Workbook, and The Screenwriter's Problem Solver - these have been taught in almost 400 colleges.

The three-act structure, set-ups and resolutions have now become mainstream as a direct result of Syd's writings. He is recognized throughout Hollywood as a seminal figure and originator of screenwriting craft. He almost single-handedly has transformed the art of screen writing into a science.

Syd mentions his mentor Jean Renoir often – in The Screenwriter’s Workbook he is thanked for “pointing out the path through the forest.”

“Yes, he got me interested in film in a big way. My first book Screenplay was really motivated by Renoir's belief that a movie should be an act of revolution. I decided to get into the industry and in the 60’s I worked as a researcher/gopher staff writer and began making documentaries.

“Then I began script reading. I had to read 70 screenplays a week and of the 2,000-plus screenplays I read, only 40 were actually put forward for production. This really intrigued me. I wanted to know what made these forty screenplays better than all the others because at that point I really did not understand what made them good. I just sensed it.”

Well after reading hundreds of screenplays and dissecting them down to their essential elements, The Formula was discovered. This is now in evidence in about 96% of all commercially successful movies today. Syd Field has defined the science of film scriptwriting.